Fisho's Frolics

[fisho mcspaz]

Been slogging away at my Ph.D novel again. One scene I recently revised was the bit where my main character talks about his girlfriend. My mum objected to the use of the word 'bird' and my supervisor said that some aspects came across as sexist, so I rewrote it. I couldn't get my main character NOT to call his girlfriend a bird, because that's just how he talks, but I tried to send it up a bit so it wouldn't be offensive. Feedback welcomed as always.

***

Marty (Martine-Jayne in full, but that’s not her fault) manages the local IGA. She’s thirty, like me; a sturdy sort of bird with a wide grin and eyes the colour of a muddy creek. That sounds pretty bloody uncomplimentary, I know, but it isn’t meant to be. Muddy creeks are the best for catching yabbies, which are probably my favourite food in the world. Anyone who doesn’t like a fresh yabby, straight out of the water and dipped in a bit of brown vinegar, is a prawn. But try explaining that to Marty. She got quite stroppy and said that she wasn’t a bird, thanks very much, and that I was a chauvinist. I’m not a chauvinist. I have a lot of respect for women. All the ones I’ve known are much cleverer than I am, and without them I think the male species would still be hovering around on the middle of the evolutionary ladder with the apes and those things that look like a cross between a fish and a squirrel. As proof of this, I have many mates, and there is a vast difference between the houses of the ones who live with their wives or girlfriends, and the ones who live with other blokes. I won’t go into details, but there is something about an all-male house that unleashes the Beast.

As for birds—what’s the matter with them? I wouldn’t mind being compared to a bird at all. Look at the ostrich: its graceful height and majestic stride ... wait a minute, they’re the ones that stick their heads in the ground with the rest of them sticking out like a feather duster. The emu is just as tall, though, and it knows no fear, but its feathers are filthy, like they’ve been used to clean the barbecue with ... Look, I just like birds, they’re very intelligent and they have brilliant plumage and I think that ought to be a good enough explanation. And I’d personally rather be a bird than some of the names I’ve been called. Of course, I didn’t tell any of this to Marty, because I thought she might dong me one.

[scoob]

just call her a Doris

[overloaded]

I dont have a problem with 'bird'

[Jimmy_041]

I'm bored and need some Fisho tonic

Watcha been up to Fisho?

[fisho mcspaz]

I'm bored and need some Fisho tonic

Watcha been up to Fisho?

Nothing particularly exciting - the highlight of the week has been cutting the lumps out of my cat Sari's fur, then getting the idea to clip her into a shape like one of those topiary hedges. There were lumps everywhere so I was gunna have to do something of the sort anyway, or she would've looked like a furry Swiss cheese. But the littlest McSpaz dropped one of his toy cars and startled her and she fled outside before I could finish the job. Since then I've misplaced the scissors, so my cat is now walking around with a ridiculously giant fluffy head perched atop this scrawny little neck. I should have taken her to a pet groomer, I suppose, but the ones I've spoken to wanted to slug me $300 because they insist on giving their cats a general anaesthetic first. I can understand this as a rule, having owned cats in the past who would have quite happily julienned my face if I'd even approached them with a pair of scissors, but Sari is not like normal cats. She is extremely calm and gentle, and I have seen the neighbour's cat actually push her over sideways without achieving a reaction - but despite my explaining this repeatedly, the pet groomers won't touch her unless they knock her out first.

[Jimmy_041]

Go to any footy this weekend Fisho?
Is the beach goddess going to dare venture down to the big smoke (Yankalilla) this weekend?

[the big bang]

Go to any footy this weekend Fisho?
Is the beach goddess going to dare venture down to the big smoke (Yankalilla) this weekend?

you be there old man? i may head down.

[Jimmy_041]

I think I'm committed to The Barton this weekend son but summer is upon us and I'm looking forward to a few sunset drinks on the balcony with the Banger family soon

[the big bang]

sounds like a plan. i look forward to it.

[fisho mcspaz]

Nothing ridiculous to write about tonight. I just want to share this website with you guys.

http://lettersforranjini.com/

I wrote in an earlier post on another thread about how it distresses me to hear of atrocities committed against children. I was thinking about it today when I turned the radio on and heard that old vulture Julie Bishop banging on about how Sri Lankan asylum seekers should all be deported back to their country. Which reminded me about the other thing that distresses me greatly: our government's stance towards asylum seekers. I'm not interested in getting into an argument on here about it. I've got my opinions, formed on the basis of my intrinsic beliefs and morals, as well as factual information and media representation of the issue, and those opinions are not going to change. I believe that we ought to welcome each and every one of these people; I do not believe that Australia is 'full' or that we do not have the resources to support a refugee population. And I believe that our government is following a course of deliberate procrastination and apathy because that's what Australians in general want. Votes, not human lives, are the motivating concern.

Anyway, this website. Ranjini is a pregnant mother of two from Sri Lanka who has been separated from her new husband and detained indefinitely, along with her children (aged nine and six), in Villawood. Potentially, she may never be released. She has been declared a security threat by ASIO but has not been informed as to why. The most probable reason is that her first husband (who is dead) may have been a driver for Tamil separatists. But this has nothing to do with her, or her children, who are facing a lifetime of imprisonment just as she is. The website was created so Australians could send her letters to hopefully provide some cheer to her in prison, and also to remind her that we haven't forgotten her and that not all Australians believe that people should be locked up when they have committed no crime.

I've written a letter to her, and I've written to Chris Bowen (and got the standard ambiguous response - I swear there's a phone app for pollies that creates a template letter and generates appropriate noncommittal phrases to suit the subject matter) and I'm gunna get a card tomorrow and get my boys to do a drawing in it to send to her and her kids. I won't say that I can't imagine being locked up in a place like Villawood, not knowing when I'd get out - because I have an imagination, it's in fair working order, and I use it as often as possible. I don't expect that my imagining is the same, or anywhere near as harsh or as frightening, as the reality. It couldn't be. But I'm going to try and use it to get a point across regardless.

Have I ever been locked up before? Yes, I have. Not in a detention centre, oh, no. But I was confined, at age twenty, for nine months in my then-in-laws' home in Georgia, USA. I lived there with my baby son, interacted with my in-laws when they came home from work in the evening, and went to the supermarket every couple of weeks. And went out to a restaurant or a pool hall with my husband when he was home, which was about once every five weeks, for two or three days. Even then I didn't see him much - he was always in the toilet, grumbling about his irritable bowel syndrome, smoking and reading his war novels for hours on end. But it's true that I had far more freedom than a refugee detained in Australia. I got to go out at times. I had far more home comforts - there were books (mostly Stephen Kings or Vietnam War novels), food in the fridge, TV with bloody 200-odd satellite channels. But I had no friends there and was not able to make new ones. I could speak to people over the phone in Australia, but mostly I was alone. And I was totally alone (apart from baby Angus) during the day, as everyone was asleep over in Oz. I could go outside but no further than the front yard - there were wild animals (I'm not kidding - coyotes and rabid possums), plus the state prison was located nearby, and when the prisoners were out working on the roads I had to stay inside, no arguments. I did have the internet for a couple of months but then my mother-in-law disconnected it, saying it 'wasn't good' for me. I think she thought I would meet strangers and invite them around. Maybe I would have. I was desperate to see someone my own age. By the time I came home to Australia, I was averaging 2-3 hours of sleep a night, I weighed 40 kilos - about the same as when I was eleven years old - and I didn't know how to react to seeing my friends again. It was good, but strange. I felt as though I'd been set apart from them and couldn't find common ground with them again. That feeling passed but it was weird as hell while it lasted. I suffered intense postnatal depression during my confinement, which didn't go away when I came home, and I was put on medication within a week of my arrival back in Australia. And this was a f***ing picnic compared to what these people in Villawood and other detention centres are going through. I still have depression. I get through it with my meds and by finding ludicrous stuff to talk about that makes people laugh. But I couldn't find a single damn thing funny when I was stuck in that house. My sense of humour deserted me. I don't know what I'd do if I were in the position of an asylum seeker in Australia. I doubt I'd have the medicine, the support and the love I've got here. I'd probably end up necking myself, and no one would be f***ing sorry at all, and people would probably even write stuff on adelaidenow.com.au like 'One less bit of vermin, now let's send the rest back where they came from'. These people in there are every bit as real as you or I am, and not just a statistic or a problem, as the media and the government encourage us to believe.

I still don't sleep too well at nights. But I hope that by doing things like sending Ranjini and her family a card, and by bringing her plight to attention here, that these issues will rest a little easier in my mind. Most of all I hope that if enough people speak up, we'll be able to change things and achieve justice and peace for Ranjini and people like her. Thanks for reading.

[fisho mcspaz]

Go to any footy this weekend Fisho?
Is the beach goddess going to dare venture down to the big smoke (Yankalilla) this weekend?

I did want to catch the Eagles in their elimination final but got a shocking migraine - double vision and everything - and spent the afternoon vomiting up Lion Mints and screaming at the Eagles kicking behinds on TV. Wouldn't mind heading down to Yank this weekend, it ought to be a great game! Have to see what the rest of the clan wants to do.

[fisho mcspaz]

It's been a while...

Thought I'd post this. I'm entering it in a writing contest tomorrow but you're allowed to publish it on your own blog, and I assume that 'thread on forum' falls into that category.

‘Dear Radio Station, Here’s Why Your Music Sucks’

Currently, Australian radio stations are in the process of shortening the length of songs played in order to ‘adapt to modern attention spans’. The new format, known as Quickhitz and pioneered in the US, cuts the songs’ running time in half, doubling the number of songs in each hour of broadcast time. This, apparently, is to ensure that listeners ‘don’t get bored’.

Well, call me a freak of nature with a prehistoric attention span and a strange tendency to not get bored when a song I like is played from start to finish, but I’m not a fan of this new development at all. So I thought I’d share my views with my local radio station.

Dear Mix 102.3,

I am writing to object to your heinous practice of slashing bits off songs with all the panache of a macaque using a battery-operated hedge trimmer. You claim to play ‘Adelaide’s widest variety of music’, and I commend you for your truthful advertising, because I certainly don’t hear these versions of songs on any other radio station.

When you’re driving in your car listening to the radio, the role and function of music is to encourage relaxation. To soothe the savage beast. Not an easy task on Adelaide’s roads, but made even harder when you’re listening to a song that’s had most of its instrumental parts cut. In hairdressing, there is a difference between a trim and an undercut. One should never have happened.

undercut.PNG (96.64 KiB) Viewed 867 times

Basically, you are taking these songs and turning them into the musical equivalent of a shit 90s hairstyle. And it is not relaxing. Like the undercut, the missing bits are not seamlessly compensated for in a smooth transition between hair and stubbled skull, between refrain and guitar riff. It’s jarring. It clunks. Quite frankly, it sucks like a bag of Richards. (Not Richard Mercer. He remains for ever in our hearts.)

richard mercer.PNG (158.55 KiB) Viewed 867 times

I have remained nobly silent through the butchering of songs by such artists as Mental as Anything, Guns ’n’ Roses and AC/DC – but when you take ‘Lightning Crashes’ and amputate the first verse, you, Mix 102.3, have just crossed the line.

I implore you, Mix, stop inflicting bad hairstyling practices on the music we all love to listen to. Adelaide drivers will thank you. Well, they won’t, because they’ll be too busy misusing slip lanes and swearing at other drivers on the Britannia roundabout, but I’m sure that deep down they will be grateful. I certainly will be.

britannia roundabout.PNG (161.79 KiB) Viewed 867 times

Yours in solidarity,

A Disgruntled Music Fan

PS. Bring back Richard Mercer.

[mighty_tiger_79]

I never understood the whole Lightning Crashes thingy with not playing the whole song!

[fisho mcspaz]

It's complete crap! How dare they mess with that song!

Here's a link to my latest post - it's easier than trying to do it here and upload all the images, etc.

https://katekurejas.wordpress.com/2015/ ... -fell-off/